The UK has overtaken France to become the world’s eighth-largest manufacturer, according to the manufacturers’ organisation, Make UK. Its analysis of the latest official data also reveals that manufacturing jobs in the UK pay better than both the services sector and the economy as a whole.
The Welsh drives-maker Invertek has announced plans to create at least 250 new jobs over the coming five years at its global headquarters and manufacturing facility at Welshpool, Powys.
The UK Government has launched a Web site aimed at helping Britain’s 5.5 million SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to cut their energy bills and reduce their emissions. The UK Business Climate Hub site offers advice on technologies such as heat pumps and green electricity generation. It arrives as industry leaders and ministers on the new Net Zero Council are calling on businesses to develop net-zero sector roadmaps
The UK manufacturing industry experienced the second-highest number of administrations of any business sector in the country during the first six months of 2023, according to an analysis by the law firm Shakespeare Martineau. There were 91 administrations in the sector – 22% more than in 2022 – with only the retail sector having more, with 118 administrations.
The UK Government has announced that UK businesses will be allowed to continue using the CE conformity mark “indefinitely” for most goods they place on the UK market, and will not have to use the new UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) mark from January 2025 as previously announced. The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) says the move, which follows “extensive engagement with industry”, will “cut business costs and time required to place products on the market and benefit consumers”. If they want to, businesses will be allowed to use both marks.
A new report from HMRC has revealed that small and medium-sized manufacturing firms were responsible for £140m of fraud and error in R&D tax relief claims during 2020-21. HMRC has revised its estimates of error and fraud by sector and this shows that almost a third (31%) of R&D claims by manufacturing SMEs were either wholly or partially “non-compliant”.
Nearly half (47%) of UK manufacturers have active plans to invest in digital technologies to decarbonise their business, according to new research published by the manufacturers’ organisation Make UK and the cloud business management specialist, Sage. Almost a quarter of those surveyed have already invested in digital systems with a further 23% planning to do so in the coming 12 months,
The Association of Electrical and Mechanical Trades (AEMT) has published a free guide to help industrial motor users to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their motors.
Manufacturing & Engineering Week has become the UK’s biggest industrial event in just its second year, according to its organiser, The Nineteen Group. The two-day event held at the NEC in June attracted 10,355 visitors and 342 exhibitors.
The UK distributor Routeco has formed a partnership with the Dutch industrial IoT specialist Ixon, whose Ixon Cloud platform is said to simplify remote access and IIoT. The company also offers an edge gateway, the IXrouter, that allows users control the entire chain from machine to the cloud.
Plans for a £98m “factory of future” innovation centre for Belfast have been approved by local council. The 10,500m2 Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (Amic) will become Northern Ireland’s national centre for advanced manufacturing, accelerating innovation and collaboration between industry and researchers. It is due to open in 2026 at Global Point, Newtownabbey.
The US force measurement specialist Interface is buying the UK-based load measurement systems supplier, LCM Systems, for an undisclosed sum. Interface says the acquisition will accelerate its growth in the global test and measurement market by adding critical engineering and manufacturing expertise with an international presence.
Reeco Automation, the Welsh specialist in cobot-based palletising systems, has announced a palletiser based on a new 20kg-capacity cobot (collaborative robot) which, it says will level the playing field between palletising systems based on traditional industrial robots and those using cobots. It believes that this will, in turn, make end-of-line robotic automation attractive to manufacturers of all sizes, especially smaller ones for whom standard robots have often been too complex, bulky, and costly to buy and maintain.
Mitsubishi Electric has announced that its Iconics Inc subsidiary has agreed to wholly acquire Iconics UK, which sells Scada (supervisory control and data acquisition) software and develops related cloud applications. The terms of the transaction have not been revealed.
Britain’s manufacturers are calling for the establishment of a Royal Commission to develop a long-term industrial strategy that would provide companies with a stable environment in which to invest, access talent and expand. This would be backed by an independent council to monitor the strategy, with the Cabinet Office being responsible for co-ordinating policy across Government.
